Founding Principal Engineer (m/f/d)

Ferto Health GmbH; Berlin; On-site; EUR 90,000 - 140,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

VSOP program

Flexible hours

Office in Berlin

EU Blue Card sponsorship

Job summary

Ferto Health GmbH in Berlin is seeking a founding engineer to own the entire platform behind a medical product—backend, data, infrastructure and security. You’ll shape the architecture and set engineering standards while collaborating with the founders and CTO.

You’ll build trusted identity and data handling for clinical use, ensure robust audit trails, and drive reliability as the product scales. This is hands-on, strategic work with real impact in healthcare.

Qualifications

• Platforms you've built and run in production, including outages and growth.
• Database systems: indexing, transactions, backups and migrations.
• Security by default: authentication, authorization, tenant isolation, audit logging.
• Identity: providers, sessions, tokens, roles and onboarding/offboarding.
• Infrastructure: IaC, containers, Linux, networking, cloud skills.
• Beyond the backend: you read and modify the app as needed.
• Systematic troubleshooting using logs, traces, metrics and query plans.
• AI-native engineering: utilizing coding agents responsibly.
• Ownership: influence roadmap and raise issues with evidence.
• Experience across multiple companies/environments.

Responsibilities

• Own the platform end to end: backend, data, infrastructure and security.
• Get it ready for clinical use and maintain reliability as we grow.
• Build identity, access and data handling trusted by clinics and auditors.
• Make architecture calls on what to build now or later.
• Set engineering standards and help hire the team.

Skills

Backend platforms

Database depth

Security by default

Identity management

Infrastructure as code

AI-native engineering

Ownership

System troubleshooting

Production experience

Cloud & Linux

Tools

None

Job description

About us

Most labs still count cells under a microscope by hand. It's slow, repetitive, and error-prone. We're replacing that manual work with software. By combining a standard microscope with a smartphone, we run computer vision models that locate, track, and measure cells automatically in real time. We're starting with semen analysis and expanding to other routine microscopic samples. We're a small, well-funded team in Berlin, founded in 2026. Our goal is to make automated, reliable diagnostic analysis accessible on any phone connected to a microscope.

The role

We're looking for an engineer who wants to own the whole platform behind a medical product: services, data, infrastructure, security and identity. A first version runs today. The hard part is making it trustworthy enough for clinical use: patient data that stays safe, an audit trail that holds up for years, and a system that recovers when something breaks. You'll own all of it, working closely with the founders and our CTO.

What you'll do

• Own the platform end to end: backend, data, infrastructure and security.
• Get it ready for clinical use, and keep it reliable as we grow.
• Build identity, access and data handling that clinics and auditors can trust.
• Make the architecture calls: what to build now, what to defer, what to cut.
• Set the engineering standard and help hire the team that follows.

What you bring

• Platforms you've built and run. You've built backend platforms from scratch and run them in production, through outages, data incidents, migrations and growth.
• Database depth. You know what happens under the query: indexing, locking, transactions, replication, zero-downtime schema changes, and backups you've actually restored.
• Security by default. Authentication and authorisation, tenant isolation, secrets, audit logging. You think about how a system gets attacked before it ships.
• Identity done properly. Identity providers, sessions and tokens, roles and permissions, onboarding and offboarding.
• Infrastructure. Infrastructure as code, containers, Linux, networking and cloud are everyday tools for you.
• Beyond the backend. The backend is your home, but when the product needs it, you read and change the app yourself.
• Systematic troubleshooting. You reproduce first and fix root causes. You work from evidence like logs, traces, metrics and query plans, and you stay calm when production breaks.
• AI-native engineering. Coding agents are part of your daily work. You give them good context, split work into reviewable steps, and stand behind every line you ship.
• Ownership. You help shape the roadmap, push back on weak ideas, set your own priorities and raise problems early. Nobody has to chase you. Strong opinions, held with evidence and open to revision.
• Range. You've worked across several companies, stacks or environments. How you work counts far more than how many years you've done it.

Nice to have

• Regulated environments with audits: medical devices, health, finance.
• Serving ML models in production.

What we offer

• Ownership from day one. As a founding engineer, you're part of the company through our virtual share option plan (VSOP).
• You grow with us. As the company grows, your role grows with it.
• Real influence. You decide how we build software, and you shape the engineering team we build.
• A competitive salary.
• A product that matters: a medical device for real clinics, built together with clinicians and lab staff.
• Flexible hours and office days. We work from Berlin and meet in person regularly, up to several days a week. This isn't a fully remote role.
• English is our working language. German isn't required.
• We sponsor the EU Blue Card if you're moving to Berlin.